


Hawkmoth's problem

by Electric_Wood



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Crack, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-04-03 17:13:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21485725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Electric_Wood/pseuds/Electric_Wood
Summary: Hawkmoth is not having an easy time finding akuma targets. So he has to settle for less than ideal...
Comments: 3
Kudos: 33





	Hawkmoth's problem

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work on Archive Of Our Own (or at all). It is completely crack. I would like critical feedback.

Gabriel Agreste stood in his hidden lair, waiting to feel a negative emotion worthy of being akumatized. Beside him Nooroo floated, a look of fearful anticipation and concern on his disproportionately large face.

"Master-" The Kwami began.

"Quiet Nooroo. I need to concentrate." Gabriel said. He wasn't willing to miss a chance to create a powerful villain just so that his Kwami could dish out advice.

The only problem was that no one in all of Paris was feeling poorly enough to warrant sending out an akuma. He had been up here for two hours already, and nothing notable had happened. He could sense people's emotions and feel how strong the emotion was on a small scale, and he had learned to differentiate between separate people's feelings. He could also tell the cause of their emotions if he focused on them.

But today, there was nothing. Nothing except an old lady cranky about the state of the clutter on her stairs that she probably never went down, a boy mad at his mom for not letting him play, and a mother frustrated that her son wouldn't work for ten minutes before going out. Those were the strongest akuma targets in all of the city. And the population was what, two million?

Perhaps people were getting better at controlling their emotions because of the threat of becoming one of his supervillains. Perhaps they were afraid of the social stigma that had been heaped upon some previous akumatized civilians. Perhaps they were more kind to each other because they didn't want to cause an akuma attack. Perhaps people in general were simply more happy than Gabriel had assumed.

But he wasn't happy. His beautiful wife, the joy of his existence, had been lost, and the only way to get her back was by taking the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculouses and combining them for the power to make a wish. So here he was. Standing, waiting, absorbing negative energy so that he could feel it when someone became hurt enough for him to recruit them.

But nothing was happening. So maybe he should listen to Nooroo.

"What was it that you wanted to tell me?" He asked somewhat aggravatedly.

The Kwami spoke carefully. "Master, I have been the guardian of the Butterfly Miraculous for thousands of years. I have seen what it can do to people. Master, the Miraculous should not be used for evil. Harnessing great power for bad purposes can ruin the souls of humans. Especially with the Butterfly brooch. Focusing on feeling other people's heartache will cause more heartache for you. I've-"

"That's enough Nooroo." Gabriel had hoped that the Kwami had something new to tell him, but of course he would give him the same monologue again. If he had one euro for every time that purple creature tried to tell him to quit his mission he would be rich.

Oh. He was already rich. But somehow he didn't have the one thing he wanted.

But wait. New emotions were registering, standing out against the petty annoyances of the rest of the Parisians. This was probably the best chance he would have all afternoon. "Nooroo, darkwings rise!"

A sensation of immense power rushed over him as he transformed, filling him with confidence. His emotion radar increased in strength. A staff appeared in his hand. He was Hawkmoth.

"I sense a negative emotion so strong," Hawkmoth stated. He had installed a few cameras inside his lair so that if he ever wanted to show Adrien what he was doing, for whatever reason, there would be a recording. He wanted his son to understand why he was doing it, but he wouldn't tell him until he succeeded. All the footage was saved to a private storage space, with no connections to the internet or other devices excluding the cameras.

He evilized the innocent butterfly in his palm, and watched it fly away. He didn't need to say anything for the camera. He could record himself saying something cool with an akuma flying later if he wanted to. He commonly did this when he wasn't working on fashion designs or as Hawkmoth. They turned out great, and they made it seem like he made up the puns on the spot.

Not that he wasn't actually good at impromptu punning. He was great. All of the Agreste men had been, as far back as history told, and most likely would be for the foreseeable future.

The connection to his akuma suddenly changed as it made contact with his target. "Apathetician, I am Hawkmoth. You have witnessed yourself how much people hurt themselves when they choose to care about their surroundings. Now one of your best friends is in pain, pain that could be avoided if she simply didn't care about that picture. I'm giving you the power to take away people's cares, and all their sorrows with them. The only thing I care about is getting Ladybug and Chat Noir's Miraculous, which you will do in exchange for your powers. Will you help me?"

"Sure Hawkmoth." The reply sounded somewhat nonchalant, as if it were a bother to even have to talk to the man giving him his strength. But that was simply part of this man's character, right? It wouldn't be a problem.

He felt the connection change again as the akuma overpowered the man, transforming him. He now wore a...loose T-shirt, sweats and a cap? At least he had decent shoes. And Hawkmoth knew that the man could jump over buildings if he wanted to.

The Akuma walked over to a woman who was crying, and stomped down on her toe. All of her care was sucked out of her into the man's shoelace, and she lay down on the concrete beneath her immediately.

Apathetician's shoelace served to house the care he sucked out of people. Perfect.

The man with now mismatched shoes began walking towards another man who appeared flustered by his duty of emptying garbage cans. But as he got close, he slowed down.

"Apathetician, what are you doing?" Hawkmoth demanded. Why was his supervillain was stopping after affecting one person?

"I realized, I don't care about this guy."

Hmm. An akuma with a moral dilemma. "But you can help him. Do you have anything better to do?" Hawkmoth argued, hoping it would compel him to action.

The akuma's unpromising reply was: "I don't really want to do anything."

"You need to create enough of a stir so that Ladybug and Chat Noir will come to fight you, and then you can take their Miraculouses." Hawkmoth reaffirmed. The man had made a promise.

"But I don't care about taking their Miraculouses, that's what you want Hawkmoth."

"And you agreed to it. Now get more energy or I'll take away your powers!"

The man defended his argument: "You just assumed that I cared about my word, and my powers. It makes no difference to me whether or not I have powers."

"But if you lost your powers, you would start caring again. Is that what you want?"

"I don't want anything. If I say that I want or need anything, then I am saying that I care about it, which I can't do."

Hawkmoth though this over before replying. "But you care about not caring about things. Your moral code demands that you care about that one thing, and your ideas all circulate around that. Now attack people so I can get those Miraculouses!"

"So because my core value is a contradiction, I should want to do what you want me to do. That seems to say that I care about you, which I don't. And speaking of that, you seem to care about those miracle things a lot. That caring puts you in opposition to me," the akuma accused.

"It doesn't matter what I care about as long as you don't care what I care about! And if you know that your central value is a contradiction and yet you still hold it, then you clearly don't care about caring anyway. And that matches your central value itself. So your position is fine," Hawkmoth affirmed confidently.

"Wait. My central value denies itself and upholds itself through denial, and attacks anyone who is in any other position even if their's has no logical flaws and condemns this one, by saying that if they care about my beliefs they have already failed. Each position contradicts the other, but neither can undermine the other without going against something the other says is inherently wrong. So my position is unassailable," the akuma realised.

"Yes, no one can take you down," Hawkmoth assured. "But I need you to take down the Miraculous wearers. You should now begin attacking people for their caring energy so that you can unleash it on Ladybug and Chat Noir to make them commit errors."

"Right Hawkmoth." The villain finally went back to work.

After a couple minutes of the strange man kicking people and having to tie a ridiculous number of knots in the shoelace to keep from tripping, two well known figures flew down from a nearby rooftop and stood ready to confront him, their temporary enemy. Ladybug and Chat Noir had arrived.

"Apathetician, unleash your stored up energy on Ladybug and Chat Noir! Then they will have to respond to every threat you make and it will be easy to grab their Miraculouses!" Hawkmoth encouraged.

Ladybug and Chat Noir were standing about twenty meters away. Ladybug called out to assess the situation: "Why are you attacking people? What do you want?"

Apathetician did not know how to answer this. As he walked towards the heroes in a low stance he spoke. "I don't want anything. I mean I don't want to want anything. Actually, I want you to not want anything."

"And I want to know what you're talking about," Chat Noir joked.

"You want us to not want anything?" Ladybug asked the villain while pulling a stick off of a nearby tree with her yoyo.

"If you want something, then you care about it. And if it is harmed, it harms you too just because you cared," the akuma explained with excessive hand motions. "So I don't want anyone to care about anything ever again." He sidestepped a stick that was whirling end over end at him.

"You must have cared an awful lot about that to get akumatized." Ladybug replied from atop a fence.

"No! Well, yes. But no, I can't have!" The stunned akuma blurted, dropping an extra shoe he had taken from one of his victims.

"If you can't figure out what you want, maybe you'll let us get what we want first. Let's move in, Chat Noir!" Ladybug called. The pair began walking in steadily, weapons at the ready.

"You want to keep caring? Then here's some free help!" Apathetician said as he jumped towards Ladybug, kicking out with his empowered shoe. Ladybug moved out of the way, rotating her yoyo to create a blurring shield.

"The akuma is in your right shoe." Ladybug's statement was blatant, not a question but rather an announcement of knowledge.

Apathetician glared at the hero with spite and exposure apparent in his eyes as well. That was a mistake.

Ladybug took advantage of the situation. "Ha! If you reacted like that to me knowing where your akuma is, you must care about it. Which means that you're giving yourself the chance to be hurt in the future if you lose it. Why don't you give it up now instead?" She walked towards the confused man again, trying to get him off guard.

This was a losing situation. Hawkmoth's akuma was about to surrender under the stunning weight of logic. He had to help. "Apathetician, hit yourself with your shoe. Then they won't be able to blame you for not caring."

The plain looking villain lifted up his right foot and tapped it against his left leg. Immediately his shoelace shrank, and his mood changed.

Charging at the heroes, Apathetician went into a series of aggressive kicks. "You are jeopardizing yourselves by caring so much! If anything you put any trust in falls, it can bring you down with it! You are all asking to have your worlds derailed!" He screamed his plea at the world. "Just let me help you!" He kicked a shoe that was on the ground at Chat Noir, missing his target drastically, but hitting a pedestrian who had been filming the fight from thirty meters away.

Ladybug and Chat Noir looked at eachother. "Umm… you just said that caring causes pain, and now made yourself care. Doesn't that mean that you are inflicting pain on yourself? Isn't that pain unnecessary? We can help you end that pain." Ladybug smiled at the akuma, both to seem nice and because she was proud of her logic.

"No! The reason I was willing to inflict pain on myself was so that I could end other's pain! I am trying to help!" He declared as the akuma's shoe jabbed and kicked at the heroes again. They jumped backward as he clumsily moved forward on one leg, holding the other in the air.

Chat Noir responded this time. "But if you are trying to end pain, why would it help to give yourself more of the exact kind of pain you want others to avoid? You seem like a hypocrite when you don't care and when you do." The black-clad boy swung his metal stick (currently nine meters long), at the supervillain, who hurdled it.

"I am not a hypocrite! I don't care what you say about me. I don't need to listen to you," the akuma lied as he jumped away from Ladybug, who tried to tackle him but missed.

Hawkmoth had to intervene again. If he didn't, then the akuma would either stop attacking people for the sake of logic, or give up entirely. "Apathetician, when they call you a hypocrite, they forget that you don't care. I need you to get their miraculous, and now that you care so much you can focus that caring on your want to help others not care. Go relieve more people of their pain before fighting Ladybug and Chat Noir again."

"Yes Hawkmoth. I will be victorious! I can just stop caring whenever I want to, so it's OK for me to care right now. Why don't they understand that?" The akuma started sobbing.

An emotional akuma that cared so much, but believed in not caring. He really was a hypocrite. But telling him that would not help Hawkmoth. He needed him to think that his case was solid.

Ladybug and Chat Noir caught up to the akuma after it stopped in a square to capture people's cares. A yoyo string pulled the man with sweats and a T-shirt towards its owner so that he couldn't run away again.

This time the villain jumped at the pair of heroes and tapped his leg mid jump, making the shoelace grow very long again. He landed short, with his right leg in the air, but didn't attack.

He just stood there.

Ladybug wrapped him up again and Chat Noir called "Cataclysm!" and walked towards the akuma.

"I really don't care. I don't understand why you do, but I don't care why you care. At least my beliefs make sense. Hawkmoth will win someday, and then you'll be sad, whereas if you just gave up now most of that sadness will be avoided. Just saying." Those were the akuma's last words.

"Bye bye little butterfly." Ladybug had to call her lucky charm before summoning the cure, since she hadn't used it in the battle.

Far away, Hawkmoth stewed over his problem. It was likely that no person in the city was going to be in a bad enough mood to be akumatized for a long time. But he couldn't give up. He may have wasted an afternoon waiting for and fighting with a ridiculous akuma, but he couldn't give up. He just couldn't. His happiness relied on this.

If only other people could be sad, so that his sadness could end.

How ironic.

Ironic as well that an akuma couldn't even hold up its own idea. A real person was worked up enough to believe something that only created logical errors when defended. Perhaps because it was all based on the idea that caring was bad. Or maybe it was simply impossible to stop caring.

"Nooroo, darkwings fall."

Gabriel could never stop caring. But maybe he, like the akuma at one point, cared too much.

Or maybe (although he would never dare think this), the problem wasn't how much he cared, but the way he went about trying to fix the issue he had. Just like the akuma.

Attacking others so that he could end his pain. Just like the akuma today. An akuma that couldn't hold up its own logic. Perhaps the idea that others should pay for his pain was wrong. Just like the akuma, it wasn't so much the person he said he was trying to help, but more so himself that he wanted to help. And in the name of love, he ignored his care for his fellow humans.

Two wrongs and a right don't make two rights.


End file.
